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Remembering a Plowshares Action for Peace, Twenty Years Ago

On December 7, 1993, my friends Philip Berrigan, Lynn Fredriksson, Bruce Friedrich, and I walked onto the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina at four in the morning, passed through thousands of soldiers in the middle of full scale national war games, came upon an F-15e nuclear capable fighter bomber, and hammered upon it to fulfill Isaiah’s Advent prophecy that someday “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and study war no more.”

The twentieth anniversary of our plowshares disarmament got me thinking and reflecting because we were charged with two felony convictions---destruction of government property and conspiracy to commit a felony crime—each carrying ten years in prison. There have been nearly 100 plowshares disarmament actions since 1980 and hundreds of people have faced a wide variety of prison time. But several people did serve as long as 18 years in prison.

During those many long days and nights in North Carolina jails, I often pondered our eventual sentencing. What if the judge, a devout Catholic who hated us, especially me, a newly ordained priest—what if he gave us the maximum, I used to ask myself, and I had to serve twenty years behind bars? What would it be like to be released in…..2013? What would the world be like in 2013?

He surprised us by releasing Phil and I after nearly nine months in jail and sentenced me to nearly another year under house arrest, but Bruce and Lynn were sent on for another year in prison.

As we begin Advent, that wonderful season of hope, prayer, peace and preparation, I’ve been reflecting on that intense Advent twenty years ago. I described the entire episode in my published journal, Peace Behind Bars, which is still in print (see www.amazon.com).

There’s too much to take in, but here are some random memories. First, being with Phil, Bruce and Lynn—three of the greatest activists in the U.S. that I have ever had the pleasure to know. Phil was a giant in the movement, like his brother, my friend Dan, and he served many more years in prison for others actions before his death in 2002. Bruce became a leader at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and Lynn became a leader in the movement for independence of East Timor, and then in Amnesty International, working on behalf of the horn of Africa, among other extraordinary achievements. Their friendship throughout our action, trial and imprisonment is one of the greatest blessings of my life.

I will never forget the action itself—walking on to the base through some remote woods, across a field, and right through the soldiers and fighter bombers. Hammering twice on the side of the fighter bomber. Being arrested. Shutting down the national war games. Being forced to lie down on the grass with machine guns at my head. Being surrounded by hundreds of soldiers and their furious commanders.

I spent that Advent in a cell with seven violent offenders, separated from my friends, at the Robeson County Jail, one of the worst in the country. I remember one prisoner stabbed another with a bic pen right at the cell door; blood was everywhere. I remember the gentle, older prisoner across the way, who was on daily heart medicine, who complained to the jailers about his poor treatment. They stopped giving him his medicine, and the next morning, he was found dead in his cell. But human rights groups, I subsequently learned, had charged prison officials there with 25 mysterious deaths in the five years before we arrived.

I remember Phil, Bruce and I were moved to a common cell at Christmas. We had no books and no possessions and there was nothing to do, so I asked Phil Berrigan to tell Bruce and I his life story. He talked for a week. Those stories became the basis for his autobiography, Fighting the Lamb’s War, published the following year.

That January, we were moved in the middle of the night across the state to Edenton’s small county jail. The warden worried for our safety, so he removed us from the main area and put us in a kind of solitary confinement. Phil and I in one tiny cell, and Bruce next door in another cell, with our own little hallway and shower, and various other prisoners sleeping on the floors around us.

We woke at 6 a.m., read from the Gospel of Mark, did a three hour bible study, then shared a Eucharist with wonder bread and grape juice. “Prisoners’ Pot Luck,” as Daniel Berrigan named it in one poem. Later in the morning, we read our mail, for Phil and I, up to fifty letters a day. Then, lunch and more intercessory prayer, followed by a one hour time writing practice. Following the techniques of Natalie Goldberg, we wrote the whole time, using two inch pencil stubs on blank sheets. We wrote many articles and letters during the course of our time. We then rested during the afternoon. Every single evening after mealtime, Phil wrote his wife Liz.

I remember waking up each morning with the shocking realization--“I’m in jail!” It seemed impossible that I would ever be released. Time came to a crashing halt. Every hour lasted a month. A thousand times I wanted to ask the warden if I could just go out to the local coffee shop for a half hour, and then come back. Eventually, I did ask him, and he had a good laugh over that. It was so hard to come to grips with the realization that I couldn’t leave the cell.

For me, the whole experience was like being locked in a tiny bathroom for 8 months, but thinking the whole time, this could go on for five or ten more years. Our trial was declared a mistrial, so we had to wait four more months for four separate trials, and finally, that summer, we were sentenced. My statement to the judge, (posted on my website), remains the most important speech I’ve ever given. Of course, the judge was outraged by my earnest call for nuclear disarmament, but he unexpectedly released me soon afterwards.

I will never forget a letter I received from Sr. Joan Chittister. “You are reminding us that the only way toward social change is through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus.” That was such a helpful Christian affirmation, one I’ve been pondering ever since. If we want to pursue justice, disarmament and peace, we have to take up the cross and risk persecution, trouble, prison, even death and then resurrection. That’s the Christian way to peace. That’s the daring challenge of active nonviolence in a world of total violence. In other words, we have to sacrifice ourselves for the struggle, as Nelson Mandela did.

A few years later, I was directing the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchised African American women and children in Richmond, Virginia, and hanging out with a Jesuit friend. “Why the heck did you do that Plowsahres action?” he finally asked me. “Well, I was really just trying to follow Jesus,” I answered. “How do we follow someone who did civil disobedience in the Temple, and was subsequently arrested, tortured and executed? What does discipleship to this revolutionary, nonviolent Jesus mean in a world of nuclear weapons and permanent war?” For the first time, my friend understood. Of course, not everyone has to do a Plowshares action, but every Christian has to struggle with that call to discipleship.

Three friends are spending their Advent in prison right now, for the most recent Plowshares action. Eighty two year old Sr. Megan Rice of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli face thirty years in prison for entering the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Let’s pray with them during these advent days that Isaiah’s oracle would be fulfilled and we will soon “beat swords into plowshares” and “study war no more.”

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